Wartime Wednesday: Blitzmas

Wartime Wednesday: Blitzmas

By December of 1940, England had been suffering under Hitler’s Blitzkrieg for months. Yet as the British people proved over and over during the WWII, they were a resilient population. Time reported in a December 30 article from that year, that “despite the bombs, life in the big London air-raid shelters, where over 1,000,000 people regularly spend the night, had become so standardized that many shelter Christmas parties were elaborate communal affairs with mass harmony singing, skits and dancing.”

Even the royals exhibited a dark sense of humor about the impact of the war on the holiday when they sent out their annual Christmas card. Rather than using the typical family photo, the pair stood in front of the bombed out section of Buckingham Palace. The Times article referenced above also reported that a new sweet was making the rounds during the Christmas season. Plum pudding, a long held traditional dish of the holiday was replaced by Blitzmas pudding, “the same as the traditional Christmas pudding except that carrots were much used where the receipt

called for certain fruit.”

The Christmas goose was also missing, with Britons settling for mutton or something referred to as “cheap Empire beef.” (I don’t even want to think about what that could be!) Homes were decorated with lots of holly making up for usual mistletoe that could not be imported from France. Toys with a distinctive wartime flavor were all the rage: dolls in contamination suits for girls and war equipment for boys. No one wanted to be accused of being unpatriotic by purchasing peacetime items.

Perhaps the biggest change for the British people was that they were back to work on Boxing Day (December 26) for the first time since the holiday’s inception in 1871. But they knew that letting their guard down for even one day might prove fatal to the cause.

What is your most memorable Christmas?

Wartime Wednesday: The Battle of Verdun

 Wartime Wednesday: The Battle of Verdun

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun. The campaign lasted for ten months, and was one of the largest battles of WWI. Fought on the Western Front, in the hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse, this battle between Germany and France was costly. The two sides suffered combined casualties and losses of over one million men.

German General Erich von Falkenheyn initiated the fight in an effort to decimate as many of the French troops as possible. He led his forces to take over Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux, but was unable to advance to the Verdun cathedral. 

His plan made sense but was ambitious. His ultimate failure was that he underestimated the French, assuming they'd be an easy target. Despite the poor morale of the French soldiers (there was talk of mutiny for many reasons - including the fact that factory workers earned significantly more salary than military troops), the men stayed and continued to fight. The Battle of Somme commenced during June, pulling the Germans into a second front. Von Falkenheyn was relieved of his command, and, the French reclaimed their forts by December of that year.

When I think of forts, images of impenetrable, stone-walls that reach into the sky, often from cliffs and other high places, come to mind. Verdun, however, was a city protected by a ring of underground forts. There were twenty major forts, and almost forty smaller forts. The Germans thought that Verdun held great historical significance to the French, and would therefore "fight to the last man," according to von Falkenheyn. He thought that if enough French soldiers were killed, Germany would emerge the ultimate victor.

Twenty-five years later, the Germans would again underestimate their foe. The London Blitz lasted for nine months. Hitler was sure that fear would overtake the English, and they would demand their government surrender on their behalf. It never happened, and England was able to defeat Germany with the help of other Allied countries.